Dying Play Scarves

Lily loves to use play scarves when we are at storytime and so I decided I wanted to get some for her. I was doing some research on buying them and discovered I could dye them myself using kool-aid. I jumped on that idea rather quickly and like most projects I got excited and bought the scarves and got some other moms excited and they bought scarves as well and then the scarves just sat in my room for quite some time. When my parents were visiting I got the bug to complete the project and so I decided to dye the little scarves I got for Lily and figured I would do the big ones at a later time. I got my directions and inspiration from 2 blogs:
http://kayciscrafts.blogspot.com/2008/12/childrens-playsilks.html
http://www.make-baby-stuff.com/play-silks.html
I mainly used the instructions from kayciscrafts, but realize the instructions on make-baby-stuff are a little easier and does not include needing jars and boiling water.

Here are my kool-aids colors all mixed and ready to go. The cherry smelled so delicious and the grape was rather overpowering.

So here is some advice if you decide you want to try this. The grape kool-aid turned the scarf rather black. Now, black is not a bad color, it used to be my favorite color in high school and I actually wanted to paint my room black (aren't you glad you didn't have me as a teenage daughter?) but it's just not very pretty on a play scarf, I don't think. I would recommend mixing a red and blue to make purple or use a smaller number of kool-aid packets when mixing it with the water. I am unsure I would do purple again because it really tunred me off. The color seems to be getting lighter every time I look at it, but for me it's just too dark.
Also, we spent a very long time trying to squeeze all the color out of the scarves. The pink and yellow were no trouble, but the others took a LONG time to get all the color out of them. Then my dad accidentally rolled the pink and orange together as he was taking them to put them on the drying rack and the pink ended up being a little tye-dyed with orange, but these things happen. The perfectionist in me cringes when I look at it, but in the end it simply adds some character. Tye-dye scarves would look awesome I bet!

So here are the completed scarves! I love the light blue.

I do plan on dying the larger scarves sometime soon, but I need to find jars large enough to hold them first.
Lily loves to roll these into balls in her fists and then throw them and watch them fall. She also will put it over her face and then blow it off. Both games we learned at storytime. I can see these scarves will get lots of use over the years and I can already see the bigger ones being used as picnic blankets and capes.